Robot Blues (18 page)

Eyes, caught in
the beam of his light, stared out at Xris from inside the compartment.

Childhood memories
of ghost stories of pharohs’ tombs, wild thoughts of dead people come to life
leaped from his subconscious and ambushed him. Xris had heard of being
paralyzed with shock and now he experienced it. Lights flashed on his arm,
alarms went off. One more jolt like that and he’d have to go in for a complete
overhaul. He drew in a deep, shivering breath, let it out in a curse.

The eyes belonged
to the robot, of course.

Xris focused the
light beam directly on the ‘bot, studied it, waited for his heartbeat to return
to normal, and wondered if it was racial memory that caused him to feel the
grip of cold, bandaged mummy hands closing around his throat.

Examining the
robot, Xris let himself off the hook.

“No wonder you
scared the hell out of me.”

The ‘bot had eyes,
real eyes—or rather, eyes whimsically designed to resemble human eyes, with
white eyeballs, blue irises, and black pupils. Sakuta hadn’t mentioned anything
in his description about eyes, and Xris wondered if the eyes worked or if they
had been built in for show. Nothing else about the robot was the least bit
human—nothing except those staring, unblinking, and unaccountably sad eyes.

The robot itself
reminded Xris of a gigantic jellyfish.

Its head was
saucer-shaped, made of metal, about a meter in diameter. A blue light flashed
intermittently on the top. The eyes were located in what Xris presumed to be
the front. The rest of the head was covered with instruments and small
antennae, projecting outward at odd angles.

Dangling down from
the head were at least twenty— by quick count—reticulated arms. These arms were
of varied length. Each arm ended in a “hand.” Each “hand” was different, each
obviously designed to perform different functions aboard the spaceplane.

The robot huddled
in a heap on the closet floor, its arms all akimbo, and gazed at him with its
sad eyes. Xris had the strangest impression that the ‘bot had been frightened
by the crash, had run into the closet to hide.

“Watch it,” Xris
cautioned himself in disgust. “Next you’ll be giving it a name!”

He took off his
tool hand, replaced it with a large clamp, providing himself with a grip that
was—literally— a vice. He reached into the closet, took hold of the ‘bot
beneath the head, and tried to lift it. He managed to drag it about five
centimeters before he was forced to admit defeat and let it fall back to the
deck.

“Damn!” He
grunted, straightening and massaging his back.

The ‘bot must
weigh in at about half a metric ton. Sakuta hadn’t mentioned this little fact,
either.

Xris considered
making adjustments to the load-bearing portion of his cybernetic arm, but
doubted that would help him much. The arm’s designers had not intended him to
go around hefting small trucks. He’d have to go out, retrieve the crate, and
bring the crate to the robot, instead of the other way around.

All of which would
take up more time—

“Central,” came a
voice, barely heard. “This is Mike. That blasted generator’s shut down again.”

Xris switched off
the nuke lamp, froze where he stood. He could have sworn, in the last seconds
before he turned off the light, that the robot’s eyes had widened in alarm. He
slid into the closet next to the ‘bot, closed the door behind him all but a
crack, and readied the tranquilizer dart. The watchman was speaking Pandor,
presumably. Xris had activated his built-in translator while he was in the bar
and now he heard pretty much what he might have expected to hear.

“Must have been
the storm. Steel bar blew over, bashed in the generator,” the voice was
continuing. “Guess you better send out the repair crews. No, morning’ll be
fine. It’s darker’n the inside of a cow’s belly around here.”

A pause in the
conversation, then, “Yeah, I’ll look the place over. I’m not goin’ near that
plane, though. I ain’t gonna risk catchin’ some alien disease. Plus I got to
make the rest of my rounds. Mike out.”

Xris smiled to
himself. He shifted position slightly, to get better leverage in case he needed
to leave the cramped confines of the closet in a hurry. Moving his shoulders,
he jostled the robot.

Something went
snick.

Lights began to
glow in the robot’s interior. It started to hum.

Xris cursed Sakuta
long and bitterly. The professor had assured Xris that the robot would
not
be in working condition. Its systems must have failed long ago, corroded over
time. It was just Xris’s luck on this blasted job that the closet had kept the
robot in a hermetically sealed environment, the low humidity of the desert had
prevented the ‘bot from rusting.

Xris glared at the
thing, wondered if he should try to shut it down, though he had no idea how it
worked, or let it be and hope like hell it wasn’t equipped with bells,
whistles, wouldn’t start singing “God Save the King.”

For the moment,
the robot was quiet, except for that low hum. Its systems were warming up,
apparently, for its interior lights, which Xris could see reflected off the
metal arms, were growing brighter. And, of course, its manic designer had put
lights in the eyeballs. The eyes began to shine with a luminescent luster,
rather like a girl attending her first prom.

The ‘bot’s arms
twitched.

Xris listened to
the footsteps of the night watchman crunch through the wet sand. The man was
walking around the crash site’s perimeter. The rain would have washed away any
tracks Xris had made. He tormented himself by wondering if he’d left the hatch
open, when he knew perfectly well that he’d shut it.

The footsteps came
to a sudden halt.

Xris swore
silently. He knew what was coming.

“Central, Mike
again.” The voice was tense. “The restraining bolt’s been removed. Send someone
out right away. Hell, don’t worry about me. I ain’t bein’ paid enough to be a
hero. Mike out.”

Xris heard the
footsteps, heard the screech of the hatch being tentatively lifted. Light
stabbed inside.

“Hey! Anyone in
there?” the watchman called nervously, adding in firmer tones, “I got a gun.”

“
Mrp,
” said
the robot. The humming sound was replaced by the distinctive whoosh of air
jets.

“Hey! Halt! Stop!”
Xris hissed at the ‘bot, hoping it would respond to verbal commands.

Apparently it didn’t.
Either that or it didn’t understand the language.

The robot clanged
and clattered its metal body parts against the side of the metal closet. One of
its arms shoved on the closet door, opened it. Eyes glowing, the robot rose
into the air, started to float out the door.

Xris made a grab
for one of the reticulated arms with his vice-grip hand, intending to hang on
to it, keep the ‘bot inside the closet.

The arm detached,
came off in his grasp. Remaining nineteen arms dangling beneath it, the ‘bot
drifted across the deck of the spaceplane, heading for the hatch. Xris stood
clutching the robot’s arm, felt an absolute fool.

“Come on out,” the
watchman was saying. His voice cracked. He cleared his throat. “I got a big
gun.”

And he probably
had his shaky finger on the trigger. Xris had no idea how to stop the ‘bot, but
at least he might stop this blaster-happy watchdog from turning the robot into
scrap metal. Xris activated the sleep dart in his metal hand and chased after
the robot.

As he exited the
closet, the metal door banged against the bulkhead. He stumbled over wires and
crates that he couldn’t see in the dark, his feet thudded against the metal
deck plating. With his crashing and the robot’s whooshing, they were making
enough noise for an army—a thought that must have occurred to the watchman.

“Come out with
your hands up! You hear? I got a gun!” The watchman’s voice shook.

The robot,
humanlike eyes glowing, arms wiggling, floated out the hatch.

Xris heard a gasp,
a high-pitched shriek, then the sound of feet scrabbling in wet sand.

He reached the
hatchway in time to see the watchman disappearing into the darkness.
Remembering his own feelings on encountering the robot with the strange eyes in
this tomblike spaceplane, Xris felt a certain sympathy for the man.

Xris could have
felled him with the sleep dart easily, but decided against it. If the watchman
didn’t report back, this was the first place security would come searching for
him. As it was, security would find Mike running through the desert as if
ghouls were after him. They’d have to stop to listen to his ghost story first.
And that might take them a while.

“
Minx-not,
”
said the robot, gazing after the watchman with its unblinking eyes. It sounded
extremely puzzled.

Xris took a moment
to determine his next move. He had a lot of things to do and very little time
in which to do them. He had to get the robot away from the crash site, safely
stowed in its crate, and the crate back on the base, and he had to do all of
that in—he figured—the next ten minutes.

The ‘bot shifted
its gaze back to him, was looking at him expectantly. Green lights flashed on
its head. The pupils of the human eyes opened wide, as if absorbing him. A tiny
beep sounded in Xris’s ear—a warning that he was being scanned. Xris held
still, hoped the robot wasn’t going to take long in its investigation.

It didn’t. The
light shut off, the eyes returned to normal. It had learned something about
him, apparently. Xris reciprocated. He studied the ‘bot.

Considering how
much the thing weighed, the fact that it was up and moving was a distinct
advantage. If he could persuade it to accompany him, his problems would he
solved. He wondered what the ‘bot was thinking, if anything. It appeared to be
extremely intelligent, but that may have just been the impression given by the
humanlike eyes. Xris was about to reach out his hand, to see if he could give
the robot a gentle shove in the right direction, when it spoke again.

Its voice was a recording
of a human voice, but there was no doubt it was a machine speaking; the words
lacked all inflection or emotion. It rattled off what may have been three
sentences, since it paused at certain intervals, then it fell silent. The human
eyes were solemn, grave, and, again, expectant. It appeared to be waiting for
him to do or say something in return.

Which was going to
be difficult. He hadn’t understood a single word. His translator was able to
translate a few hundred thousand languages, but not, apparently, this one.

“Sorry,” Xris said
shortly. “I don’t understand. Now here’s what we’re going to do.”

He raised his
hands to indicate he meant no harm. Moving slowly, as if approaching a fearful
child, he extended one hand, his flesh-and-blood hand, and kept talking. If he
couldn’t understand the ‘bot, it wouldn’t be able to understand him, but it
might pick up from his tone that he wasn’t threatening.

“Don’t be
frightened. I got a job to do. You and I—” Xris stopped talking.

The blue light had
begun flashing again on the robot’s head. The light stopped when he stopped
talking and he halted all motion. He waited tensely a moment, but he didn’t
dare wait long.

“We’re just going
to take a little walk.”

The blue light
began to flash again. Xris experimented, watched the light. Sure enough, the
light’s flashes were pulsing in time to his voice. When he quit talking, the
light quit flashing. It was probably recording his voice. He’d have to remember
that. He had a few choice comments to leave with it, remarks the ‘bot could
relay to Professor Sakuta. Xris again extended his hand toward the robot.

The ‘bot extended
one of its hands to him.

Xris gingerly
touched the metal hand, which had two jointed “fingers” and a “thumb” and had
undoubtedly been designed to perform tasks a human hand could perform. Xris
gave the hand a gentle tug, hoped like hell it wouldn’t come off.

“Follow me,” he
said experimentally, watching the light, which pulsed three times, for the
three syllables. “This way.”

The ‘bot’s hand
did not come off this time. Xris gave the ‘bot a gentle tug, motioned with his
other hand that they were going outside the hatch, indicated that they were
leaving the spaceplane.

The robot obeyed,
floated silently after Xris. It even switched on a beam of bright light to
illuminate the way. Xris had his doubts about the light, which could probably
be seen on Pandor’s moon, but he had no idea how to shut it off and no way to
command the ‘bot to do so. He increased his speed. The ‘bot kept up with him.

They reached the
fence. Xris could hear the sounds of some sort of heavy-duty vehicle
approaching, but it was heading for the crash site and he was a good two
kilometers away from the site by then. From this position, he could see the
back end of the maintenance building. He fumbled for the crate’s remote,
switched it on, waited tensely.

At first, nothing
happened. He was just thinking up some truly unique and imaginative swear
words—words he intended to make certain the robot recorded—when he saw the
crate float out from around the corner of the maintenance building, drift
slowly down the alley toward the fence.

The thing had only
one speed, and that was glacial. Nothing he could do to hurry it. Xris kept one
eye on the ‘bot, kept his ears tuned. He heard voices now. They sounded
excited. They were too far away for his translator to pick up, and so he had no
idea what they were saying. He could guess, however. He mentally urged the
crate to move faster.

At last the crate
reached the fence. Xris touched another button on the remote. The crate’s jets
fired. It soared up and over the barbed wire effortlessly, settled down on the
ground right in front of him. He opened the lid.